When Vikrant Bhis, 40, had his first Big South Mumbai show, Hum Dechenge, in 2024 he gave the politically somnolent neighborhood a strengthening shot of hidden history.
“Many people came from the movement,” recalls the painter for more awarded. Everything from Ambedkari Jalsa (Anticast of Protest Poetry and Songs) to the archives of Dalit Panther magazine, which belonged to his co -founder Raja Dhale, and further evoking Bhim, the gathering of the cries for Ambedkarites.
Ramabai residents Ambedkar Nagar Chawl in the suburban Ghatkopar stood before his paintings from 1997, where the police fired at those who protested against the desecration of the statue of the BR Ambedcar, and soaked the portraits of 10 victims. “That’s my uncle,” said one visitor to Bhis.
Bhise’s painting on Riot Ramabai Chawl. This is called “Where is Manohar Kadam” (Kadam is a policeman who ordered shooting on protesting Dalit).
It was an important moment for an artist who is forced to paint invisible and unspeakable. “This is my call,” says Bhis, who witnessed the riots of his uncle’s house. “These are my stories.” His work seems even more urgent at a time when these history is intentionally erased and/or cooperated.
Some visitors said they did not know in Mumbai that such things had happened, as well as “so recently”. Now you understand why the artist is on a mission to take over our 3000 -year history of oppression based on the case of a wider audience and disillusionment of those who believe that the caste system is dead.
Pain, people and protest
Bhise is fertile. It may decide to produce 50 multilayer works and end up with 120, as it happened with archive historicity, inspired Pamphlets Dalit Panther from 70 years and show their inspiration, Black Panther party, founded in California in 1966 (series;
His first solo show in Noida in 2023 was about 400 works, including 16×10 feet wall painting, a 16 -year -old Namantar struggle, which concentrated around the University of Maharashtra’s Aurangabad, and 10 panels to seek justice inspired by the protesters and the presence that stretched over 40 feet. “When I see works of Renaissance painters, they are mostly about war and fighting for real things,” he says. “This is our Renaissance.”
Bhise’s painting on Mahad Satyagrah.
At the exhibition, the Summer Berlinale Council was five panels or 20 feet of Mahad Satyagrah, a non -violent movement from 1927 led by Ambedkar for the right to access public water. The change is here, but its pace is not enough for artists. “We’re still wondering how far we’ve come,” he says. “But it’s 100 years old and only one community has been working and waste hygiene.”
From the uncertain lives of workers to a scholarship driven to suicide with castism, they all find representation in Bhise’s Labyrinth’s works of art that cracked in pain, people and protests. The bodies are intertwined by conflict and change of images with shades of blue, which range from the lightest sky to the deepest indigo.
Painting the unspeakable history
While Bhise’s works have always concentrated caste, work, poverty and justice, it was only after the protests of citizenship in 2019, Covid-19 lock and farmers’ protests that he began to paint Ambedcar, a leader who was called at all these moments. “Wherever there is injustice, there is an ambedcar,” Bhis says. His first portrait in 2021 entitled Leader Labor was a worker using a rag to wipe the statue of Ambedkar. The man cleans the statue with the right hand when the left hand rests on the ambedcar’s eyes. You could say that it represents the revelation of hidden history.
Bhise’s first portrait called “Labor Leader”.
“Who killed Nitin Aage?” Bhis asks this question in the image title about the intercast love affair that ended in a brutal murder of a teenager. Like Aage, Bhis fell in love with Marathy Siddhi’s wife, with whom he met at an art school, and married a family opposition. Now he avoids their four -year -old twins Abir and Kabir, who ordered them to stay away from their materials as he painted in the middle of his paternal life and grabbed every chance to work. “There is no way to wait for the right mood,” he says.
It also focuses on the everyday joy and inspiration that the community relies in the middle of oppression, whether it is an annual assembly at Mumbai’s Chaityabhumi, where the ambedcar was cremated; or humanitarian idols such as Jyotiba and Savitribai Phuule; euphoric indigo representation Jayanti; or the red wall of his parents’ house. “I want people to see the lives of ambedcarite,” he says. “Our houses are also different, our food, our literature, our lifestyle, color palette …”
Recently, his paintings were exhibited in prestigious places such as Art Dubai and Art Basel. These are the Bergen Assembly in Norway and Friez London, among other things. “My works were shown in 20 group performances last year,” he says, still a little unbelieving in the growing interest in his art.
It was after the Noid show that the art world really accepted Bhise’s stories. All years of working with a courier company until he met a big jump to watch his passion and study art, and then a long stint as a teacher of art and teacher, finally paid off. Now he can devote his whole time to painting history that no one has told us about.
The writer is a journalist based in Bengalur and co -founder of India Love Project on Instagram.
Published – 11 July 2025 07:05 IS
